Weekly output: wireless-service satisfaction, ransomware survey, Dashlane report, Verizon fee increases, drone policy

I had one work event on my calendar this week that I don’t think rates as an appearance worth listing here, since I got roped into it at the last minute. I’d put the Internet Law & Policy Foundry’s tech-law trivia contest on my schedule Wednesday thinking it would be fun to watch, but then one of the contestants asked if I’d like to join their team–and we finished in third place. This was one of the first public trivia contests I’d joined since 1987, when I was a member of the high school team that won a New Jersey state championship, and it’s nice to see that I still have it or at least some of it.

This coming week has me traveling for work for the first time since the middle of June and to an event that first landed on my travel calendar in 2018: I’m headed to Las Vegas for the Black Hat information-security conference. The trip doesn’t include the DEF CON infosec conference that follows Black Hat, and on Patreon I explained why I opted out of that and feel a little guilty about it.

7/31/2025: People Like Wireless Service Best When It Doesn’t Involve the Big 3 Carriers, PCMag

The gap betweeen J.D. Power’s customer-satisfaction stats for the big three wireless carriers and that firm’s metrics for companies reselling the networks of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon caught my eye.

8/1/2025: Ransomware Victims Are Still Paying Up, Some More Than Once, PCMag

This survey published by the security firm Semperis got an unfortunate news peg when the Trump administration rescinded the West Point department-chair appointment of one of the report’s expert contributors, former Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Administration head Jen Easterly.

8/1/2025: This Password Manager Caught Some of Its Own Employees Not Using Its Product, PCMag

Dashlane’s PR folks offered me this story ahead of time. Since I have always found the fallible-human element of information security to be fascinating, I accepted the offer, and then my editors concurred.

8/1/2025: Months After Freezing Wireless Rates But Not Fees, Verizon Slips in a Fee Increase, PCMag

One of my colleagues brought this to my attention, and I was happy to set aside some time Friday morning to cover it.

8/2/2025: The Drone Industry Can’t Wait for This One Federal Regulation to Take Off, PCMag

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Nationals Park to cover a drone-policy conference hosted there by the trade group AUVSI, but I didn’t get around to writing it until Thursday night.

#AUVSI #BlackHat #ConsumerCellular #Dashlane #droneDelivery #drones #finePrint #JDPower #junkFees #NationalsPark #NatsPark #passwordManager #ransomware #Semperis #verizon #Vz #wirelessServices

Weekly output: MediaTek’s new Chromebook chipset, Verizon’s new price-lock pledge

This week saw me file two longer, not-yet-published stories for places that hadn’t seen my byline in several months, which reminded me how client re-development can be as esential as client development. This coming week will have me in San Francisco for a few days to cover the NTT Upgrade conference for my trade-pub client Light Reading (with that Japanese telco paying for my airfare and lodging, an arrangement I will note in the copy I file).

4/2/2025: MediaTek’s New Chromebook Chip Looks a Bit Overpowered, PCMag

Writing about new chipset architectures makes me feel like I’m pushing the envelope of my own grasp of technology–because until a few years ago, that topic wasn’t a regular feature of my coverage.

4/3/2025: After Raft of Hikes, Verizon Offers 3-Year Price Lock on Rates (But Not Fees), PCMag

Verizon provided an advance copy of this announcement late Wednesday afternoon to a colleague at PCMag who then asked me to cover it. That didn’t leave me much time to write a post that would be ready to publish at expiration of Verizon’s 8 a.m. embargo Thursday, but then I realized that this press release didn’t answer some key points about this rate guarantee and a few of Verizon’s other changes. I got clarification on one detail from a Verizon publicist and then opted to wait to see the entirety of the company’s fine print before filing this copy. My editors, to their credit, were fine with my taking that extra time to get the story right.

#chipsets #chromebook #finePrint #KompanioUltra #laptops #MediaTek #priceLock #rateLock #verizon #VerizonPriceLock

“Swap”

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